WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The S-Classes That I Raised ◈

Chapter 60: Pretending to Have Forgotten (3)

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“Hunter Han Yujin!”

Park Hayul cried out, relief and worry mixed in his voice. At the same time, surprise spread across the faces of the men who had been watching me cautiously.

“I thought it might be, but it’s really Han Yujin?”

“Why is Han Yujin here? I heard the Haeyeon Guild Master had him wrapped up so nobody could even see his face!”

“Fuck, did Han Yoohyun come too?”

They looked around in a panic. Of course, they could not imagine I had come alone.

“Did the Haeyeon Guild Master really come too?”

Park Hayul looked excited despite the blood on his face. Did he still like Hunters after getting beaten up? He was seriously sick.

“I’m alone.”

“What? But...!”

“Just close your eyes.”

I stepped aside and used the earring’s barrier skill on Park Hayul. His shouts were muffled by the barrier. If it was this much with my current stats, Park Hayul would not be able to hear anything at all. It was a B-rank barrier. Unless I made a mistake, not even a hair on his head would be harmed.

I should avoid using poison if possible.

“...You’re alone?”

Kim Yongjin muttered as if he could not believe it. So suspicious.

“If I weren’t alone, someone would have jumped out already. You know I’m a little overprotected, right?”

More than one or two people would be horrified if they saw me here. My words made them relax.

“Has an F-rank lost his mind?”

One of the D-ranks tried to approach me, but Kim Yongjin stopped him with an outstretched arm.

“Wait. He must have something if he’s that confident. The fact that he followed us here without getting caught is not normal.”

“Still, his stats are definitely F-rank, aren’t they? The Association certified them.”

“Even with good equipment, he can’t even reach C-rank. He’s a gift that fell into our laps.”

The rice cake is our Peep. Round, soft, and good at rolling, too.

“First, should I say it’s nice to meet you? We’re strangers, but not really strangers. Something like that.”

They looked at me as if I were talking nonsense.

“...I’ve seen you on TV.”

“No, we met in person. I went back in time, you see. I returned to the past. Surprised?”

It felt good to say that in front of people I had killed four years ago. It made everything feel real. Yoohyun had come back to life so quickly that things had felt strangely vague.

“A whole five years! Ah, I met you four years ago. That’s one year from now, and I never saw you again after that. Because I killed you. It’s really nice to see you again like this. Since you’re going to die again anyway, be my bamboo forest for a while.”

I might as well say everything that had been bottled up inside me.

“...What? Is he crazy?”

“I know I look crazy, but saying it right to my face hurts. Besides, you bastards aren’t exactly sane yourselves. If I’m fifty kinds of crazy, you’re five hundred. Especially you, Kim Yongjin. You’re completely insane. I’m really sorry I killed you so easily back then.”

To think I had been given another chance like this. If I thought, Thank you, I would sound truly insane.

I did not enjoy killing people. But sometimes, people lost their minds. Even if everything between us had been erased, it did not change the fact that those bastards had ruined, and would ruin, many people’s futures.

“Still, thanks to you bastards, I did get my act together.”

After my second year, I had finally found my footing. I had never formed a fixed team, but around then, I could always find capable Hunters.

Wait a minute.

That was exactly when MKC fell apart and Haeyeon took its place.

Unlike the chaos after the Awakening Center was established, things had started to settle down. Haeyeon had also stopped giving me such a hard time, at least until dungeon difficulty started going wild.

‘...Did my little brother put people on me?’

And when Yoohyun personally rushed into that dungeon with its changed rank, Haeyeon had settled into first place in the country, and he had become somewhat freer from Guild Master work.

“Hmm. People really should not have too much free time.”

If he had been busy fighting other guilds, he would not have had time to do something crazy like arriving before the dungeon gate closed and jumping in. At most, he would have sent one or two A-rank Hunters in his place.

“I think that bastard really is out of his mind.”

Whispers accompanied looks usually reserved for lunatics. That was harsh. My mind was mostly fine.

“I really did return to the past, even if I don’t know the lottery numbers. What should I tell you? Is there anything you’re curious about? Want to know which S-rank Hunters will appear in the future? How about huge new dungeons? You’re interested in stocks, right? Lee Dongwan, the stock you bought will be worthless paper within a month.”

That pathetic bastard would keep talking about it until his mouth wore out for another year.

Anyway.

“It’s nice to see you again like this. You have never returned to the past, so you probably don’t understand how I feel. Everything I went through became something that never happened. It felt strangely unpleasant, so I tried not to think about it. The situation had changed a lot, and at first, I planned to stay quiet. More than anything, people who died because they got involved with me are alive and walking around now. I tried... I tried not to think about it.”

It was not just that someone close to me had died.

I had survived because of them. At the same time, I received their memories. There would be a corpse in front of me, and memories of that person thinking about me would rise up in my mind.

Yoohyun’s memories came only in pieces because there were too many from his whole life, but normally, I always received memories from right before someone died. If they were merely someone I knew casually, it was still bearable.

But if they had been worrying about me, it was enough to drive me mad.

If they were needlessly good people and I only had good memories of them, hallucinations of them calling my name would not leave my ears for days. I felt as though I would die if I kept remembering, so I forced myself to forget.

But now, they were all alive. How was I supposed to describe that feeling?

Unlike Yoohyun, I had buried them inside me for years. Unlike Yoohyun, they did not even know me anymore.

Like those bastards in front of me.

Should I be happy? Should I be sad? Should I apologize? Should I thank them? Before that, could I even contact them and meet them?

I lived because you died.

I could not ask anyone for advice about something like this, so I simply pretended to forget and lived on.

“What do you think? Some of them were really good people. I was so close to losing my mind that I drowned myself in alcohol.”

Perhaps they did not want to listen anymore. The men formed a battle formation.

At least answer me.

Grumbling, I pulled out the curved sword I had received as a D-rank dungeon reward.

“Drive him into the middle and capture him!”

At Kim Yongjin’s shout, two Hunters with shields moved to either side of me. At the same time, the C-rank defensive Hunter activated a skill and jumped over my head.

They were trying to leap over me and take my back.

Not a chance.

I bent my knees slightly, then jumped upward. The C-rank Hunter looked startled and tried to slam me down with the shield.

Thunk!

My forearm struck the shield. I grabbed it with my other hand and spun my body.

Unable to withstand the powerful rotation, the C-rank defensive Hunter let go of the shield and was thrown down. I immediately hurled the stolen shield at a D-rank Hunter.

Crunch!

“Ghk!”

The shield cut through the air and struck the D-rank Hunter squarely in the head. In the meantime, the other D-rank Hunters charged at me with their weapons raised.

It was hard to dodge in midair. I knew that well.

But still.

“Urgh?!”

I extended a tentacle around a D-rank Hunter’s neck and pulled hard. Using the D-rank Hunter, who staggered but tried to stay standing, as a pivot, I changed direction in the air and landed.

“You bastard!”

I easily dodged the spear thrusting toward me and drove the curved sword into the spearman’s forehead. At the same time, poison flowed through the tentacle.

The two D-rank Hunters collapsed one after the other.

“Damn it!”

While the D-rank Hunters panicked, Kim Yongjin immediately tried to run. Quick judgment.

Thorn Trap.

“Urgh!”

Kim Yongjin fell face-first like a frog hit by a stone. I threw the curved sword I had pulled free at the C-rank defensive Hunter, preventing him from getting up, then used Thorn Trap on the remaining Hunter too.

Honestly, it was disappointingly easy. Before returning to the past, I had nearly died dealing with them.

“Should I contact them after all? Huh, Yongjin?”

I asked as I approached Kim Yongjin, who was trembling.

“I remember their phone numbers, but what should I say? They don’t know me. But I can’t keep pretending not to know them either. Like you bastards, those people must be living their lives too. They have not Awakened yet, but once the Awakening Center is established, they’ll become Hunters. Then they’ll enter dungeons, like you bastards. Into that complete mess.”

I neatly cut off one of Kim Yongjin’s legs and released Thorn Trap.

“Aaargh! Ghk, y-you, what are you...!”

“I don’t have to take responsibility for everything just because I returned to the past. It became something that never happened in the first place. Still, it remains in my memories. If I keep pretending to forget, I’ll be real trash.”

So what should I do?

I used Thorn Trap on Kim Yongjin again, took out a bottle of mana stone powder from my inventory, and scattered some around the area. We had not killed all the nearby monsters yet. They would crawl out soon enough.

“I hope we really never meet again.”

After letting out a sigh, I turned around.

Look at Park Hayul. I told him to close his eyes, but he had watched everything and thrown up. I approached and removed the barrier.

“Are you okay?”

“...Ah, yes. I’m, I am.”

“Let’s leave first. Monsters will come when they smell the blood.”

“Y-Yes.”

I led Park Hayul back the way we had come.

“It would have been better if they had listened when Hunter Han Yujin tried to persuade them...”

Near the gate, which had been thoroughly cleared, Park Hayul spoke after recovering somewhat.

Was he talking about dealing with those bastards? I had not persuaded them. I had just unloaded my problems on them. Since he could not hear anything, it must have looked like persuasion.

“Don’t worry about it. From what I heard, they were vicious criminals who had already harmed a lot of people.”

“Really?”

“Yes. And you need to keep this a secret. I’m not supposed to be wandering around like this. My Stealth skill is a secret too.”

Park Hayul’s expression became extremely excited at my words. He was recovering too quickly. Maybe it had not sunk in yet. Some people were like that. They seemed fine on the day it happened, then cried and made a scene two or three days later.

Or maybe he had always been mentally unusual. He did seem a little like that.

“I had no idea Hunter Han Yujin was so strong! There were two C-ranks. Are your stats actually B-rank or higher?”

“It’s not like that. Naturally, my abilities are also a secret.”

“Yes!”

“You can keep a secret, right?”

“Yes! Of course!”

He sounded confident. I gave Park Hayul a smile to show that I trusted him.

Of course, I did not truly trust him.

I had decided to use Park Hayul, but I could not do that before confirming what kind of person he was. That was why I had deliberately shown him.

The plan had changed slightly, but originally, I only intended to reveal my Stealth and Thorn Trap skills.

If I came personally to help him and showed skills nobody else knew about, of course he would want to talk about it. On top of that, he was an entertainer who met many people and lived buried under countless conversations. It was an environment where he would want to casually mention what he knew.

‘The situation became more dramatic than expected, so his mouth will probably become even looser.’

If he could not endure it and talked, that would be the end of it.

Right now, everyone believed I was inside the heavily secured Haeyeon Guild. I had not even canceled Stealth on the way here. I had ridden the bus while remaining invisible the entire time. Anyone besides Park Hayul who had seen me would be silenced by death, so no matter what he said, it would all be considered lies.

‘If he can keep his mouth shut, he passes for now. Otherwise, I can use him to promote a special skill and be done with it.’

He had three A-rank special skills, so at least one should be useful. I hoped all my effort would pay off.

“I really don’t know how to thank you. I thought all Hunters were good people. You’re the people who make sure dungeons don’t break out!”

...Maybe none of my effort would pay off.

Park Hayul continued with a bright smile.

“Can I call you hyung? You’re five years older than me. I’m twenty.”

“Ah, sure.”

He was the same age as Yoohyun. Why were they so different? Twenty was still young, but still.

“Can we exchange contact information...?”

“Not yet. Delete the messages as soon as you leave the dungeon. It’s best to erase all traces connected to Awakening brokers.”

I should check that he deleted them before we parted. Could deleted messages be restored? I had not directly said I would come rescue him, but still.

“You also cannot contact me for a while. If you get caught somehow, it will become troublesome in many ways.”

Park Hayul made a face like an abandoned puppy. He really was ridiculously handsome.

“How long?”

“About two weeks. I’ll contact you first.”

“I’ll keep the secret and wait patiently. Please contact me. Don’t forget me. Please.”

We had barely met, yet he was so desperate. If I said the Keyword, it felt like it would work on him immediately.

“I’ll put up a barrier, so wait quietly here. I’ll finish clearing the dungeon.”

“Yes, hyung! Be careful!”

Seeing him smile brightly and wave both arms made a sigh escape me.

He really did not seem right. He was very strange.

* * *

I returned home safely, showered, and changed clothes. In the meantime, my number of SNS followers had passed ten thousand. There were many comments in foreign languages too. I deleted the messages I had exchanged with Park Hayul and uploaded a video of Peace as a baby.

There were also messages from Yoohyun and Yerim.

[Hyung, are you on SNS?]

[MisterMisterMister!! Follow me back!]

Yerim had an SNS account too.

[Yeah.]

[Tell me your account.]

After replying, I fidgeted with my phone for a moment. Then I slowly entered a number I still remembered. The call connected, and soon someone answered.

[Hello?]

It was a familiar voice. A voice I had never expected to hear again. I thought it had faded in my memories, but it was clear in my ears.

‘What do you mean, tricked? It’s not like any team wants me either.’

‘It’s okay. Don’t worry about it, Yujin. It’ll all pass.’

Even things I had buried rose up one by one. I did not know my memory was this good. It would be strange to cry now, so I smiled.

“I’m sorry. I called the wrong number. ...Have a good day. Always.”

I ended the call.

Then first, I needed to do something about the Awakening Center that would soon be established. I could not let that chaos happen again.

‘But who should I ask for advice?’

Yoohyun? Even if he was the Guild Master, my little brother was still young. He could help with dungeon raids, but would he be able to help with problems involving the Awakening Center?

‘It’s a political issue of a sort. Seok Simyeong or Kim Haeyeon probably handle this.’

That Mister Seok Simyeong seemed like he would do the job well, but what should I do? I did not want to meet him, but...

After thinking it over, I called Seok Simyeong. He answered before the phone rang many times, and his unnecessarily pleasant voice came through.

[Hello, Mr. Han Yujin. I’m thrilled that you called me first.]

...Please do not be thrilled. Especially not in that voice.

“Um, do you have time? I have something to say. It’s important.”

[If Han Yujin is contacting me, I would make time even if I had none!]

Seok Simyeong spoke enthusiastically. Ugh. Just thinking about meeting this person already made my stomach hurt. I would endure it this once. Once the rearing facility was completed and I left Haeyeon, I would not have to see him again.

“Then I’ll come to you. Where should I go?”

[I’ll send someone over immediately. Please wait just a moment.]

How kind of him. It would have been nice if he had been even one-quarter of one-quarter as friendly before I returned to the past. I ended the call and stood up.

‘It’s something I can do, so I should do it.’

I would solve just this one thing.

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